Part of 2. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 24 May 2016.
Absolutely. The industry is interlinked, because, having been to Trostre and Llanwern and also to Shotton—at Shotton, particularly, they were saying to me, ‘Well, we do make money, but the reality is we rely on Port Talbot for steel. It would take us six months, roughly, to source steel from somewhere else. In the meantime, there is no guarantee that we’ll be able to keep our customers.’ I think that’s sensible. The reality is we cannot be a major industrial economy if we don’t produce our own steel. That is a fundamental requirement of being an industrial economy. We need to produce the steel that we need for industry, but also, of course, the steel that’s needed for the armed forces, to equip them properly. This is an argument well rehearsed by ourselves and the UK Government. It’s encouraging to see that there is interest. A more worrying scenario would have been if nobody had come forward with a view to buying all of Tata’s assets in the UK. Certainly, it’s important that Tata maintain the stance that they have taken in terms of wishing to see a viable sale go forward. I will be calling on them again tomorrow to continue with the goodwill they’ve already shown.